“Do you not think so, Papa?” she asked suddenly.
Her voice, too, was another source of sadness, for it was undeniably a sweeter, smaller rendition of Hattie’s. So many pieces of his wife remained, long after she was gone, each one a painful gift.
Christ.He pressed his fingers into his throbbing temples and realized he had not been listening to a word his daughter had spoken for the last half hour. What the devil was the matter with him?
“Of course I think so, poppet,” he told her.
“I am relieved you think reading is a waste of my day as well,” she said, grinning at him impishly. “Shall you tell Simmonds my time should be devoted to something far more suiting, like going to the aquarium or the waxworks instead, or shall I?”
He frowned, for he should have known better than to agree with anything his daughter said. “Verity, you know very well I will do nothing of the sort. Reading is important for a young lady these days. Your mother would have wanted you to study it vigorously and broaden your mind.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Again.
He could afford to lose far more than the five thousand pounds in a wager, but he could not afford to go about things the wrong way with his daughter. He was dreadful at communicating with the fairer sex, and that much was apparent.
Verity’s chin tipped up. “But my mother is not here, Papa.”
“No,” he acknowledged on a sigh. “She is not.”
Most days, he buried himself so deeply in his daily obligations—Home Office, Special League, Verity, estates, Markham’s, his other business interests, and the list went on—he scarcely had the time to reflect upon the gaping absence of Hattie in his and Verity’s lives. The years since he had lost her had taught him distraction was a blessing, though not a panacea.
“You still speak of her as if she is,” Verity accused.
Did he? He stopped attempting to assuage the ache in his temples, surrendering to the headache which would eventually consume him, and raked a hand through his hair. He did not think so.
“I speak of what she would have wanted for you,” he corrected gently, “because she loved you desperately, poppet. I do not want either of us to forget her.”
“I never knew her,” Verity countered, a stubborn edge entering her voice.
She was older than her five years. Perhaps the fault was his. Perhaps being motherless was the culprit. Regardless of the cause, his daughter had been growing markedly more stubborn of late.
“Youdidknow her,” he argued. “She held you in her arms when you were a babe. You know her now. When you look in the glass, you can see her face reflected back at you. When you speak, it is her voice. Deep inside your heart, her love lives on.”
But oh, how hollow and empty his words sounded as he spoke them. Hattie’s death would forever haunt Felix and Verity both. He suspected he would never think of her without the inevitable sensation in his gut, rather like a dagger twisting, to think she was forever lost to him.
Why her, he had cried out to a God who had seemingly forsaken him in the dark days following Hattie’s death.Why not me?
He still did not have his answer. The meaning of some pains in life, he had discovered, were not to be found.
“I love you, Papa,” Verity told him. “All I have to remember my mother is her pictures.”
“And her gloves,” he reminded his daughter. “Her locket. Her hair.”
“Things,” his daughter sneered. “I do not want them from a mother I cannot recall.”
The throbbing in his temples reached a dramatic crescendo. “You are not permitted to speak of your mother with such disrespect, my lady,” he warned.
“I do not want to read,” she said then, pouting. “You cannot make me. Simmonds cannot make me.”
He wondered if her aversion to reading stemmed from the fact that her mother had loved it and would have wanted more than anything for her daughter to be well-read, or if she was truly struggling with learning it. He pressed his fingers into his temples again, desperate for relief. “I can and will, and so does Simmonds. You must take your studies seriously, Verity. Your mother—”
“Would have wished it,” she interrupted.
Her green eyes, so like his, stared at him with unrelenting defiance. She was, at once, the most adorable and beloved creature he had ever beheld, but also the fiercest. Perhaps she was right, and perhaps he did rely too much upon Hattie.
“You may have the rest of the afternoon to do as you wish,” he allowed. “I will inform Simmonds.”
